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modernzorker's review
2.0
I love horror fiction, but if there's one thing I despise, it's a book presenting itself as one thing then morphing into something else without warning. Blood Road manages to commit this sin twice which is, like a hemorrhoid the size of a grapefruit, equal parts impressive and irritating. It was this irritation that pushed me to not only see my way to the end of the story but pen this review.
So if you read the back of the book for Blood Road, you come away with the impression that you're about to dive into a story where a woman is kidnapped by a long-haul trucker serial killer who has set up a torture chamber in the back of his 18-wheeler. You wouldn't be wrong, per se, but you wouldn't be getting the whole story. Let's pick up where the publisher's copy left off.
Amanda Peck is your typical twenty-something pretty girl working a dead-end job as a waitress. In addition to her dead-end job, she's also got herself a deadbeat boyfriend. Ron Stinson had a promising future in hockey (the story is set in Ontario, Canada), but a broken leg followed by a series of bad decisions has seen him turn into an alcoholic, abusive gambling addict who can't hold down a job to save his life. After he assaults her for her tip money so he can play one more round of poker, Amanda decides she's done: throwing her few meager belongings into a backpack, she sets off out of Parry Sound with one thumb outstretched, figuring that anywhere and anything has to be better than the joke of a life she's leading.
She didn't count on 'anything' being a night-driving trucker with blood on his mind though, and stepping into the black and chrome Peterbilt could be the last mistake of her life. The driver, one Konrad Valeska, is no ordinary sadist though. He's a vampire, with a lineage he can trace all the way back to Vlad Tepes, and he kills more to keep himself alive than for the sport of it. This is the first sin: I picked up this book expecting a serial killer operating out of a big rig, and instead, less than a hundred pages in, I discover I've actually picked up a goddamn vampire story. I don't mind vampire fiction, but I do expect the publisher to be up front about something supernatural going on before I start reading.
So we continue on, knowing that Amanda is the sixth victim this guy's picked up along this route, and I assume the rest of the story's going to be about how she survives being Valeska's captive, but then Amanda's able to escape by pretending she's dead. Konrad dumps her on the side of the highway like he's done his previous victims, and once she's recovered, she's on the road to revenge. That's sin number two.
Sin #1 (Vampire Fiction disguised as non-Vampire Fiction) I place squarely on the shoulders of the publisher. There's no reason to keep this element of the story a surprise: you piss off readers who aren't looking for supernatural horror or who don't want vampire fiction, and you fail to engage fans of vampire fiction who overlook the book because it doesn't seem to have anything to do with vampires.
Sin #2, on the other hand, lays right at van Belkom's feet. I can forgive a lot of things in horror, but I absolutely cannot, for one second, believe a being with super-enhanced senses like Konrad Valeska falls for Amanda's ruse. I'll totally give van Belkom props for having Amanda come up with the ruse--it's a great idea, it uses tools she has at her immediate disposal, and if Valeska were an ordinary human adversary, I wouldn't blink twice at it working.
But Valeska's a vampire. There's no way I buy that she fakes her death and he can't hear her heart still beating, notice as she takes those slow, shallow breaths, or see her skin ripple with the pulse of the blood flowing through her veins. Amanda escapes because the plot dictates she escapes, not because she earns it. This might work in a YA vampire story, or it was made clear that Konrad's senses have dulled over the centuries, or even that he was forced to move quickly to dispose of her body and couldn't take the time to ensure she was really dead, but none of this is the case. This amounts to a slap in the face to any adult reader, and especially anyone who takes their vampire literature seriously. I like the idea of a woman escaping her tormentor and returning to take revenge on him, and it's certainly a common theme in both thrillers and horror fiction alike, but van Belkom's handling of this point is so ham-fisted as to be laughable. Two hundred pages in we've seen the ending telegraphed a mile away, and van Belkom doesn't make any effort to throw us off again.
That said, it's not all doom and gloom. I genuinely love vampire fiction where writers take a chance on vampires that aren't stuck-up, aristocratic, drop-dead-gorgeous bishonen. In fact, van Belkom pokes fun at this idea more than once: Konrad Valeska's an overweight, pasty, balding, suspender-wearing schlub with fangs so old they've started to rot out of his mouth and can't break human skin, but when police track down a copy of his commercial driver's license, the photo on it is a head shot of Brad Pitt. I might have laughed way too hard at that, but I refuse to believe he picked that actor at random...it's either commentary on Valeska's taste in vampire films, or it's van Belkom having a go at a genre trope, and either way, I'm totally down with it.
There's a sub-plot in the book about Amanda's boyfriend hitting rock bottom and trying to turn his life around, and I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, I think it's important to see portrayals of addiction and overcoming said in mainstream fiction. I'm friends with a number of people who turned their lives around after battling addiction, and Ron certainly behaves like some of them did. On the other, his redemption is very quick in coming. There are years of trust eroded in his relationship with Amanda, but it's a matter of weeks and he's back in her good graces, showing himself to have matured and be worthy of her love again. I get that there are only 316 pages in the book, and the story is structured such that there can't be months or years going by of Ron proving himself serious at his desire to change, but it's still an awful lot to swallow. Then again, Amanda's still young and a little foolish, and obviously still has feelings for him. It's not outside the realm of possibility, but at the start of the book, the guy barely treats her better than Valeska does, and Valeska's a serial killer--that should brook a little more effort on Ron's part before Amanda's letting him back into her life (not to mention her bed).
Finally, the book ends with the worst 'the end...or is it?' you could possibly ask for. I read to the conclusion, hoping against hope van Belkom wasn't going to go there, because one thing I hate in horror is the ending which indicates that "the horror is only just beginning" or some shit like that. So, of course, van Belkom gloms on to that tired device as well when nothing about the novel calls for it. Seriously dude, we all know you aren't going to revisit this particular scenario. You had to know how tacky this crap is, and even if you didn't, your editor should have. This isn't Friday the 13th, we don't need the promise of more grief in the protagonist's future.
I hate to say it, but Canadian horror has been forever spoiled for me by exposure to Michael Slade. That his antagonists are all ordinary flesh-and-blood human beings makes them that much more chilling. Unfortunately van Belkom breaks no new ground with his vampire: still allergic to garlic, still burnt in the sunlight, still paralyzed by a stake through the heart, still irritated by holy water, still held at bay by a crucifix. Putting him behind the wheel of a big rig as a long-haul night-driving trucker is a nice touch, but Konrad Valeska won't make anybody's list of great vampires in fiction for a reason, and that reason is, "Because he's not that interesting."
Two sonorous blasts of the air horn out of five.
So if you read the back of the book for Blood Road, you come away with the impression that you're about to dive into a story where a woman is kidnapped by a long-haul trucker serial killer who has set up a torture chamber in the back of his 18-wheeler. You wouldn't be wrong, per se, but you wouldn't be getting the whole story. Let's pick up where the publisher's copy left off.
Amanda Peck is your typical twenty-something pretty girl working a dead-end job as a waitress. In addition to her dead-end job, she's also got herself a deadbeat boyfriend. Ron Stinson had a promising future in hockey (the story is set in Ontario, Canada), but a broken leg followed by a series of bad decisions has seen him turn into an alcoholic, abusive gambling addict who can't hold down a job to save his life. After he assaults her for her tip money so he can play one more round of poker, Amanda decides she's done: throwing her few meager belongings into a backpack, she sets off out of Parry Sound with one thumb outstretched, figuring that anywhere and anything has to be better than the joke of a life she's leading.
She didn't count on 'anything' being a night-driving trucker with blood on his mind though, and stepping into the black and chrome Peterbilt could be the last mistake of her life. The driver, one Konrad Valeska, is no ordinary sadist though. He's a vampire, with a lineage he can trace all the way back to Vlad Tepes, and he kills more to keep himself alive than for the sport of it. This is the first sin: I picked up this book expecting a serial killer operating out of a big rig, and instead, less than a hundred pages in, I discover I've actually picked up a goddamn vampire story. I don't mind vampire fiction, but I do expect the publisher to be up front about something supernatural going on before I start reading.
So we continue on, knowing that Amanda is the sixth victim this guy's picked up along this route, and I assume the rest of the story's going to be about how she survives being Valeska's captive, but then Amanda's able to escape by pretending she's dead. Konrad dumps her on the side of the highway like he's done his previous victims, and once she's recovered, she's on the road to revenge. That's sin number two.
Sin #1 (Vampire Fiction disguised as non-Vampire Fiction) I place squarely on the shoulders of the publisher. There's no reason to keep this element of the story a surprise: you piss off readers who aren't looking for supernatural horror or who don't want vampire fiction, and you fail to engage fans of vampire fiction who overlook the book because it doesn't seem to have anything to do with vampires.
Sin #2, on the other hand, lays right at van Belkom's feet. I can forgive a lot of things in horror, but I absolutely cannot, for one second, believe a being with super-enhanced senses like Konrad Valeska falls for Amanda's ruse. I'll totally give van Belkom props for having Amanda come up with the ruse--it's a great idea, it uses tools she has at her immediate disposal, and if Valeska were an ordinary human adversary, I wouldn't blink twice at it working.
But Valeska's a vampire. There's no way I buy that she fakes her death and he can't hear her heart still beating, notice as she takes those slow, shallow breaths, or see her skin ripple with the pulse of the blood flowing through her veins. Amanda escapes because the plot dictates she escapes, not because she earns it. This might work in a YA vampire story, or it was made clear that Konrad's senses have dulled over the centuries, or even that he was forced to move quickly to dispose of her body and couldn't take the time to ensure she was really dead, but none of this is the case. This amounts to a slap in the face to any adult reader, and especially anyone who takes their vampire literature seriously. I like the idea of a woman escaping her tormentor and returning to take revenge on him, and it's certainly a common theme in both thrillers and horror fiction alike, but van Belkom's handling of this point is so ham-fisted as to be laughable. Two hundred pages in we've seen the ending telegraphed a mile away, and van Belkom doesn't make any effort to throw us off again.
That said, it's not all doom and gloom. I genuinely love vampire fiction where writers take a chance on vampires that aren't stuck-up, aristocratic, drop-dead-gorgeous bishonen. In fact, van Belkom pokes fun at this idea more than once: Konrad Valeska's an overweight, pasty, balding, suspender-wearing schlub with fangs so old they've started to rot out of his mouth and can't break human skin, but when police track down a copy of his commercial driver's license, the photo on it is a head shot of Brad Pitt. I might have laughed way too hard at that, but I refuse to believe he picked that actor at random...it's either commentary on Valeska's taste in vampire films, or it's van Belkom having a go at a genre trope, and either way, I'm totally down with it.
There's a sub-plot in the book about Amanda's boyfriend hitting rock bottom and trying to turn his life around, and I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, I think it's important to see portrayals of addiction and overcoming said in mainstream fiction. I'm friends with a number of people who turned their lives around after battling addiction, and Ron certainly behaves like some of them did. On the other, his redemption is very quick in coming. There are years of trust eroded in his relationship with Amanda, but it's a matter of weeks and he's back in her good graces, showing himself to have matured and be worthy of her love again. I get that there are only 316 pages in the book, and the story is structured such that there can't be months or years going by of Ron proving himself serious at his desire to change, but it's still an awful lot to swallow. Then again, Amanda's still young and a little foolish, and obviously still has feelings for him. It's not outside the realm of possibility, but at the start of the book, the guy barely treats her better than Valeska does, and Valeska's a serial killer--that should brook a little more effort on Ron's part before Amanda's letting him back into her life (not to mention her bed).
Finally, the book ends with the worst 'the end...or is it?' you could possibly ask for. I read to the conclusion, hoping against hope van Belkom wasn't going to go there, because one thing I hate in horror is the ending which indicates that "the horror is only just beginning" or some shit like that. So, of course, van Belkom gloms on to that tired device as well when nothing about the novel calls for it. Seriously dude, we all know you aren't going to revisit this particular scenario. You had to know how tacky this crap is, and even if you didn't, your editor should have. This isn't Friday the 13th, we don't need the promise of more grief in the protagonist's future.
I hate to say it, but Canadian horror has been forever spoiled for me by exposure to Michael Slade. That his antagonists are all ordinary flesh-and-blood human beings makes them that much more chilling. Unfortunately van Belkom breaks no new ground with his vampire: still allergic to garlic, still burnt in the sunlight, still paralyzed by a stake through the heart, still irritated by holy water, still held at bay by a crucifix. Putting him behind the wheel of a big rig as a long-haul night-driving trucker is a nice touch, but Konrad Valeska won't make anybody's list of great vampires in fiction for a reason, and that reason is, "Because he's not that interesting."
Two sonorous blasts of the air horn out of five.
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